Case report and literature review: Asymptomatic littoral cell angioma in a 3-year-old girl.

Background: Littoral cell angioma (LCA) is an extremely uncommon benign vascular tumor of the spleen. Cases of LCA in infants are rarely reported, and due to the rarity of the tumor and non-specific symptoms, the diagnosis of LCA is often overlooked in clinical practice. Case report: We present a 3-year-old girl with pulmonary inflammation who was admitted to the hospital due to the discovery of a space-occupying lesion in the spleen. Pathology after splenectomy confirmed LCA, and there was no recurrence observed at the 5-month follow-up examination. Conclusion: LCA should be considered when a child shows asymptomatic splenomegaly, with antigen expression indicating dual positivity of endothelial and histiocytic markers. Laparoscopic splenectomy remains the primary method of treating LCA.

Experimental Study on Basic Mechanical Properties of Basalt Fiber Reinforced Concrete.

Blending a certain proportion of basalt fiber into concrete improves the toughness of concrete, which prevents cracking and avoids the brittle behaviors. In this paper, the compressive, tensile, and flexural tests of concrete with different basalt fiber contents were carried out. Then the test phenomena, failure modes, and mechanical properties were compared and analyzed to derive the relationship between the basalt fiber contents and mechanical properties. The toughness and crack resistance performance of basalt fiber reinforced concrete were evaluated by the fracture energy, advanced toughness parameters, and characteristic length proposed by Hillerborg. The correlation coefficient of basalt fiber was introduced to establish the calculation formula for mechanical properties of basalt fiber reinforced concrete. The results indicated that basalt fiber significantly improved the toughness and crack resistance performance of concrete. The enhancing effect of the basalt fiber on the compressive strength of concrete is lower than that of tensile strength and flexural strength. Moreover, the improvement effect was the highest with the basalt fiber content was 0.3% and 0.4%.

[Research progress in relations between renin angiotensin system and diabetic cardiomyopathy].

Renin-angiotensin system (RAS) is activated in diabetes. The rise of angiotension II (Ang II) stimulates the cardiac fibroblast proliferation and the alteration of collagen metabolism through AT1 receptor on cell surface, causing the myocardium interstitial and perivascular fibrosis, and the ventricular myocardium rigidity and diastolic function disturbance, leading to the clinical symptoms of diabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM). The main members of RAS including Ang II, Ang-(1-7), Ac-SDKP and ATR play the important role in the development of DCM. This article reviewed the interactions between RAS and endothelin (ET), reactive oxygen species (ROS), transforming growth factor-beta 1 (TGF-beta 1), nuclear factor-kappa b (NF-kappaB), signal transduction system and apoptosis in DCM.